EDITOR'S CHOICE -- SCOTT SUTTELL

Local investment adviser allegedly defrauds NBA players' union

Blog Entry: April 26, 2013 10:25 AM | Author: SCOTT SUTTELL

The founder and managing director of Prim Capital Corp. in Independence has been charged with attempting to defraud the National Basketball Association players' union out of $3 million with a bogus contract.

From 2001 until this year, Prim Capital “served as the primary outside investment advisory firm handling the investments and finances for the New York-based National Basketball Players Association, the union representing NBA players,” the news service reports. Prim managed up to $250 million of the NBPA's assets, reviewed individual players' investments and conducted financial seminars for players, federal prosecutors said.

Prim “was asked to turn over copies of its agreements with the NBPA in 2012 as part of a probe by the U.S. Department of Labor into potential criminal activity at the union,” according to the story. In response it produced an agreement showing the firm's fees were $350,000 per year.

Several months later, the firm produced another contract listing the firm's annual fee at $602,000 for a five-year term, prosecutors said.

“But an investigation showed that a signature from former NBPA general counsel, Gary Hall, on the contract had been forged months after his death, prosecutors said,” according to Reuters. “Another signature on the contract was allegedly forged as well, according to the prosecutor's office.”

U.S. attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement, "As alleged, Joseph Lombardo faked the signature of a dead man as part of manufacturing a multi-million dollar contract out of whole cloth that, had it been enforced, would have caused significant losses for basketball players who entrusted him with their savings. And together with his partner in crime, Carolyn Kaufman, he allegedly lied about it to a federal grand jury.”

Mr. Lombardo and Ms. Kaufman will make their initial appearances in Manhattan federal court on May 2.

Whiners get their way

A lot of Americans are hurt by sequestration spending cuts, and they have no recourse.

One special group, though, gets immediate action when inconvenienced: business travelers.

The Senate on Thursday passed a bill to end furloughs that have disrupted air travel nationwide.

Approval of the measure “came without dissent,” USA Today says, and the House could take up the measure as early as today. (The legislation allows the Federal Aviation Administration to shift $253 million from other accounts to eliminate the furloughs and avoid closing 149 towers at small airports.)

The newspaper says the FAA “warned travelers about staffing challenges around en route centers at Cleveland, Washington, New York and in regional control centers” for several others cities. Cleveland was among the “worst hit areas” this week, USA Today notes.

The FAA says about 40% of flight delays nationwide this week can be blamed on furloughs.

“On Wednesday, there were 863 flight delays based on staffing, and another 2,132 for weather or other reasons, according to the FAA, which tracks traffic delays but not taxiing and other airfield delays,” USA Today reports.

The hypocrites in the business community who are such deficit hawks when federal spending doesn't affect them personally did a terrific job of pressuring Congress. Just don't believe them next time they call for “sacrifice” in the form of spending cuts somewhere else.

Top 10 list

The election is more than three-and-a-half years away, but it's never too early for The Washington Postto speculate about presidential candidates for the next election.

And slipping in at No. 10 among possible Republican contenders, as The Post sees it, is Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

From the paper's analysis:

The news keeps getting better for Kasich, whose approval rating has steadily recovered from its doldrums early in his term. A Quinnipiac University poll this week showed his approval at 52 percent, and he led all comers by a clear margin in 2014 (though he remained under 50 percent and is losing some GOP support). If Kasich, once a popular Republican House member and Fox News host who ran for president briefly in 2000, can keep it going and win re-election, it's hard not to consider him a serious presidential candidate if he runs.

The three leading GOP contenders at this early (really early) stage are, in order, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Doctors and God

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres, director of the leukemia program at the Cleveland Clinic, offers an exceptionally well-written and thoughtful post in The New York Times about the complexities of treating a leukemia patient who was a Jehovah's Witness — a group that believes it's wrong to receive the tissue of another human being, thus ruling out blood transfusions.

This paragraph does a good job of demonstrating Dr. Sekeres' thought process:

We enter our chosen profession to kill that malignant golem, leukemia. But our patient approached his leukemia focusing more on eternity than his time on earth. While many felt his belief had tied our hands so that we couldn't treat his leukemia optimally, ultimately our responsibility must be to our patient's goals more than to our own: in this case, his relationship to God, and his desire to reach heaven. I hope he made it.

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